Is Higher Logic terminating open source Vanilla?

Not_Oles · March 12

open.vanillaforums.com has a March 1, 2025 post from @Linc, an Admin, titled Higher Logic has terminated open source Vanilla.

@Linc says:

On 2 Dec 2024, I received this message from Higher Logic's Director of Software Engineering:
". . . we have decided to deprecate continued support for the open source version of Vanilla Forums."

@Linc also says:

Higher Logic removed the Addon directory without notice.

I therefore strongly recommend migrating to another forum software, like Flarum, immediately. Your forum will eventually become compromised without ongoing security updates.

However, further down, @mcrouse, also an Admin, replied on March 6, 2025:

At present, Higher Logic has not discontinued support for the Open Source version of Vanilla. However, our recent upgrade to PHP version 8.1+ has posed significant challenges with legacy code relied upon by the Open Source version, impacting our ability to maintain add-ons and push additional update to the solution this year.

What's going on over at Vanilla? What effect will there be here at LES?

AuroraZero · March 12

Nothing for LES atm I am watching and if push comes to shove will act. Right now there are no flaws and if it becomes that there is I am sure something can be done to remedy the situation.

FrankZ · March 12

For immediate release

I can neither confirm or deny that @AuroraZero is the real owner of LES.

willie · March 18

It sounds like the github repo will stay open to community contributions so it's likely that there will at least be security fixes as needed. One of the things I like about this software is its relative simplicity, so it's fine with me if not too many new features get added going forward.

legendary · March 18

Fork and make “Vanilla Ice Cream” version. Flarum is not acceptable as alternative.

Not_Oles · March 18

Looks like there was a release yesterday,

https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/releases/tag/2025.003 says:

OSS Release 2025.003
We are going to move to a quarterly release for Open source changes. Release notes are here.

It seems like a login might be needed to read the release notes at success.vanillaforums.com.

I ran git clone https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla.git. After taking a quick look around, I didn't find the release notes.

Maybe I might try setting up Vanilla. . . .

yoursunny · March 18

The end is nigh.
LES forum deadpools.
IRC channel remains.

Otus9051 · March 18

or we clone raidforums and disguise ourselves as a hacking forum!

or we set up whmcs and all the tickets are just threads

Not_Oles · March 19

@Not_Oles said:

I ran git clone https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla.git.

Here is a quick overview of what might be the current Vanilla OSS HEAD ecosystem surrounding the above cloned Vanilla repository.

Does it seem like a clueless™ guy could install Vanilla and actually get it working without too much trouble?

Is there an easier or better way to look at software similar to what LES is running?

Does anybody else want to participate?

Vanilla-Docker

Besides the Vanilla repository that I cloned, the main Vanilla Git Repository also offers a Docker environment version, which says,

"Only supports Mac OSX at the moment but everything can be easily adapted to work on other platforms. Assume that you are using PhpStorm as your IDE.

"This repository contains a ready-for-development environment to develop against Vanilla."

Vanilla OSS Head (just after 2025.003)

From README.md in the cloned git repository:

Installation

The current version of Vanilla requires PHP 7.2+ and MySQL 5.7+. The following PHP extensions are also required: cURL, DOM, Fileinfo, GD, intl, JSON, libxml, PDO

The Basics of Self Hosting -- Seems to require a login, but a 2019 version seems available

How to Install Vanilla (From search engines):

How to Install Vanilla Forums with Apache and Let's Encrypt SSL on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

How to Install Vanilla Forum on Ubuntu 20.04 | Vultr Docs

Vanilla OSS Head README.md's PHP 7.2+ Requirement

PHP 7.4 EOL: Navigating Legacy System Challenges

Vanilla OSS Head README.md's MySQL 5.7+ Requirement

MySQL FAQ A.1.2.

"Why did MySQL version numbering skip versions 6 and 7 and go straight to 8.0?"

"Due to the many new and important features we were introducing in this MySQL version, we decided to start a fresh new series. As the series numbers 6 and 7 had actually been used before by MySQL, we went to 8.0."

MariaDB vs. MySQL

More Options

Addons for Vanilla Forums

VanillaForums Community

Not_Oles · March 20

How can we understand a little about how LES works?

I took a quick look at Advanced PHP localhost development on a Mac for mere mortals (2021?), written by the guy who seems to be @linc on the open.vanillaforums.com website. From this I got the idea also to also try a version of Wordpress, since Wordpress and Vanilla both use php.

From the post:

"it remains very challenging to setup and maintain a professional-grade localhost. Increasingly, we sidestep this by adding “magic” automation, but this exposes a new cost when it breaks in mysterious ways that are difficult to Google.

"I don’t like that cost, and I think it’s widely underestimated. I’m not suggesting “pain is gain” or even that the experience of building your own stack is particularly formative. But I do believe stack management is unavoidable, and ultimately the only way out is through it. Deferring it isn’t sparing you, it’s just shifting the challenge and making it loom larger later."

Also found, Vanilla 2023.001 Open Source Release - PHP 8 Works! (Built From Source) — Vanilla Forums. It looks like there might be a chance that this week's Vanilla OSS HEAD might at least partly work with PHP's latest software?

We have a 2021 post here at LES which says LES runs on PHP 5.6 and LiteSpeed. Is that still true?

So . . . maybe, on a Linux server, I could just try grabbing and building current or very recent sources for Apache, MariaDB, and PHP plus Vanilla OSS HEAD plus WordPress or maybe ClassicPress -- see also Classic Press Github. Here also is a link to sources for OpenLiteSpeed just in case it's decided to go with a server possibly closer to LES than Apache.

There is no plan to run an actual site. So it doesn't matter at all if this little project doesn't get fully completed or doesn't even work. The fun parts are looking at the source code, building, and installing.

Anybody interested joining this project to maybe understand a little about how LES might work? Anybody have hints on mistakes that I am making here?

Thanks everybody!

_MS_ · March 20

No surprise, really. They've been planning this for long, and I have known it for more than 2 years.

Early in 2023, I was looking for a download of vanilla package from their site but it kept redirecting me to higherlogic.com. so, the next step was to look up in the web archives. Here's the last archive of domain actually opening the corrent site.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221214112128/https://vanillaforums.com/

Here, you had a link at the bottom called Open Source that led you to the Vanilla Forums download page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221219224515/https://vanillaforums.com/software/

But, since the domain was redirected to https://vanilla.higherlogic.com/, this link and page went missing. The past download link leads you to a "Page Not Found The page you were looking for could not be found." message.

There are threads at https://open.vanillaforums.com/ since 2023 about moving from Vanilla to Flarum or other alternatives.

Not_Oles · March 22

@Not_Oles said: So . . . maybe, on a Linux server, I could just try grabbing and building current or very recent sources for Apache, MariaDB, and PHP plus Vanilla OSS HEAD plus WordPress or maybe ClassicPress -- see also Classic Press Github.

I had lots of fun this evening downloading the sources for Apache, skimming the install documentation, and glancing at some of the source code!

Maybe I could post about compiling and running self-compiled Apache, possibly followed by additional posts about MariaDB, PHP, Vanilla, and Word/ClassicPress?

On the other hand, perhaps (hopefully) compiling a LAMP stack and perhaps (hopefully) getting Vanilla running on it is too off topic (even though LES runs on Vanilla)?

What do you think? Thanks!

emgh · March 22

@AuroraZero said:
Nothing for LES atm I am watching and if push comes to shove will act. Right now there are no flaws and if it becomes that there is I am sure something can be done to remedy the situation.

If you need something small coded, such as a fix for something, let me know and I shall provide.

Mason · March 23

@Not_Oles said: How can we understand a little about how LES works?

Took a stab at diagramming the LES "Stack". This should cover most of what's under the hood. On the eventual to-do list is upgrading Vanilla to a more recent version as well as upgrading PHP (which is still using 7.4 at the moment, but I've tested 8.2 in Dev before and got it functional so I know it's relatively easy).

@Not_Oles said: What's going on over at Vanilla? What effect will there be here at LES?

Vanilla OSS has been losing support from Higher Logic for a long time now. We've been on an old version for years now and I've tested upgrading the forum a couple times on the dev site with mixed results and poor documentation my first couple go-arounds. I'll take the plunge and complete the upgrade at some point in the near-ish future after working out all the issues first. Seems like the community will maintain the OSS version without Higher Logic's "official" support. I doubt there will be any huge updates or feature additions moving forward, but that's not a big concern to me.

Not_Oles · March 23

Hey @Mason!

Thanks for carefully and completely answering my question with your terrific chart!

Maybe, going forward, the chart could live in the What the FAQ?! thread?

Thanks for everything you do for LES!

Tom

Not_Oles · March 26

@Mason said:

. . . I've tested upgrading the forum a couple times on the dev site with mixed results and poor documentation my first couple go-arounds. I'll take the plunge and complete the upgrade at some point in the near-ish future after working out all the issues first.

I grabbed a CPX-11 (same as what LES ifs using), posted a yabs, and tried a couple of new installs (not upgrades) from the https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla repository.

Both the git clone and the OSS Release 2025.003 file archive seem to leave me with the following error when I visit with my web browser: "Could not find the autoloader. Did you forget to run 'composer install' in '/var/www/redacted.xxx' ?"

What I had been expecting to see was an admin account creation dialog box for Vanilla. Something like the image shown on this ancient tutorial.

The first time I tried to download and run composer I got errors. Several errors were because of PHP packages that apparently should have been but were not installed with apt. I wiped everything, went through the install again, with the missing apt packages added.

Now I want to read some of the composer documentation before I try running composer again.

Seems like the community will maintain the OSS version without Higher Logic's "official" support.

I haven't yet found any tutorial on installing OSS Vanilla 2025.003. I haven't been able to access the release notes mentioned on https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/releases/tag/2025.003 as being available at https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/1754-release-2025-003. I just get a file not found, and I can't seem to make an account to log in.

It would be nice to write a tutorial on installing OSS Vanilla 2025.003 if I get it installed.

Just to be clear, I'm not planning to start another forum which competes with us LESbians.

Thanks @Mason! Thanks everyone!

Is Higher Logic terminating open source Vanilla?

Comments

For immediate release